Immortality
by Midorima Kazunari
Summary: Deadpool and Jack Harkness realize how much they have in common as they team up to fight an enemy. (Written for the RLt Green Room Challenge #12, Colliding Dimensions Challenge.)


Jack sits upright, gasping for air like a fish thrown on land. It takes an extra heartbeat before he can open his eyes. The world before him is in grayscale and the parts of his brain that restart the quickest realized that this means whatever _killed_ him, damaged his eyes before ending his life.

He blinks a few times and the stain blotched on to the graffiti-covered fence before him slowly fades from gray to pink to vermilion. As color returns to his wider vision, he is reminded once again that Cardiff is awfully gray.

He shakes his foggy head and looks around. _Most things that try to kill me don't bother to hang around, but…_ His eye catches a glimpse of more red and it dawns on him that it represents more than beauty, passion, and traffic signs, but also blood.

The stain starts nearby as a handful of pound coin-sized drips close to his foot. Then a few steps away there is more… a variety of drops gives way to a gush, a veritable puddle in the gravel. A smear trails toward the railroad tracks and as he follows it, Jack gets closer to the enclosure at the Cardiff Queen Street Railway Station. A red handprint smudges the robin's egg blue pole holding up the pristine white station sign.

An ominous bloody boot print appears on the second and fourth stairs of the maintenance exit. _Was I fighting to protect someone — something — or defending myself?_ he wonders as he follows the blood, his hazy brain refusing to cooperate. _Please, don't let me be too late._ Jack reaches out to the wall of the enclosure, using it to hold himself up, despite his wobbling legs. _Too much adrenaline, too little rest._ On the platform the bloody trail begins to fade and then ends at a bench with a mask-clad man, slumped on a bench.

"That's the worst Spiderman costume I've ever seen," Jack says as he lifts the man's head. As he drops the chin to the chest, the man slides off the bench and tumbles to a heap on the ground, leaving a halo of blood behind on the bench.

Jack rolls the unresponsive body toward him and pulls the mask up just enough to check for a pulse at the carotid artery. He waits thirty seconds.

"I guess this'll be your last Halloween."

Little bits of memories surface to his forebrain: Halloween, trick-or-treaters, masks, three-piece suits, and ninja swords – but none of it makes sense.

* * *

Deadpool opened his eyes underneath his mask and played 'possum.

"That's the worst Spiderman costume I've ever seen," the man said as he leaned over him, forcing his head up.

 _ **That voices sounds familiar.**_

 _Do we owe him money? Does he owe us money?_

 _ **Wait, did he kill us?**_ Deadpool allowed his head to flop when the guy let him go and then went loose.

 _Weee! We're falling and we can't get up. Didn't that thing kill –_

The man rolled Deadpool onto his back and lifted the corner of his mask, putting two fingers on his pulse.

"I guess this'll be your last Halloween." Deadpool was sure he heard the other man sigh.

"I highly doubt that," Deadpool said.

The man skittered backward, warily. "You had no pulse," he accused.

"Well, yeah," Deadpool said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck. "That happens a lot to me, but I always get better."

"Then you're immortal, too?"

"No, there's just one of me."

 _ **Three technically.**_

 _Don't forget the Deadpool Corp! Lady Deadpool is so hawt!_

"No, I meant… Never mind. I'm Captain Jack Harkness, and I also suffer from immortality," he said, holding out his hand. Jack's smile was blinding and perfect, despite the fact that it didn't travel to his eyes. Deadpool took his hand and got to his feet.

"Wade Wilson," he replied, shaking the hand. "But my friends call me –"

 _ **We don't have any friends.**_

 _What about Cable?"_

 _ **He told us to fuck off for a while.**_

 _He'll forgive us; he always does._

"What did I do to piss him off this time?" he asked.

Deadpool was momentarily distracted by a hand waving in front of his face. He grabbed it – maybe a little too hard if the grunt was any indication – and stared at it.

"You still with me, Wade?"

"Yeah, sorry. My inner monologue is a little ADHD. Anyway, some people call me Deadpool. The Merc with the Mouth, the Regenerative Degenerative."

Deadpool sat back down in the red mess that had been his bodily fluids as the rain started just outside the enclosure.

"I don't meet other immortals everyday," Jack said, watching Deadpool adjust the straps on his boots. "How did you become one?"

"A mad scientist experiment gone horribly wrong," he said, peeling back his mask and revealing the cancerous lesions below.

"Oh." Jack's smile fell.

"You?"

[Mind the gap. The express train is passing through the station. This train will not stop. Please, mind the gap.]

"Through a series of unfortunate events that happened a long time ago," he admitted, his voice tinged with sadness.

"That damn Lemony Snicket," Deadpool muttered.

"What?"

"Never mind. We're both about as forthcoming as… well, something that's not very forthcoming," he said, straightening up.

The train rushed through the station, blowing up crumpled newspapers and chip bags. Jack waited until the trained cleared the platform, before chuckling, and resting his hands on his hips. "So, tell me, as an immortal what's the one thing you want more than anything?"

[Chimichangas?]

 _Hell to the yes!_

"To die, of course. Death is a smokin' hot babe, and she's waiting for me," Deadpool giggled.

"We always want what we can't have, don't we?"

"You?"

[The train is now departing. Please stand clear of the doors and mind the gap.] The train pulled away as the two men conversed, Jack on his feet, Deadpool on the sticky bench.

"Same, but I want to prevent myself from becoming something later down the line."

"Nothing's set in stone, man. Don't let some two-bit oracle tell you —"

"I've seen it with these two eyes."

"You time travel, too?" Deadpool shouted, wobbling to his feet.

"Wait! What? You've traveled through time? Don't tell me you are a companion of the Doctor as well!"

"Doctor?" Deadpool asked, taking a step back. "I don't trust doctors as far as I can shoot them."

[The four pm eastbound train is now arriving at the platform. Please mind the gap]

"Then you don't know _this_ Doctor. Someday he'll cure me; I'll grow old and die."

"You let me know how that works out for ya, but I'm telling ya, Jack, the future's not set. Cable's taken me back and forth from riding dinos bareback back in the day to riding robots _bareback_ in the future and I've seen things that would make your eyes curdle.

 _Isn't that curl?_

 **No, hair curls; milk curdles.**

"Then eyes melting, maybe?" Deadpool wonders.

"Do you talk to yourself often, Wade?"

[Mind the gap. The 4:10 pm westbound train is now arriving. Please mind the gap.]

"Yes, and I'll ask you not to interrupt," Deadpool said, pulling on his mask as a train pulled into the station. Commuter passengers spilled out onto the platform, dressed in various costumes. Jack looked twice at a woman in gray face paint and angel wings and his eyes slid over a taller, slender creature in a black suit and tie, before his attention came back to Deadpool dancing some sort of jig. A chill caressed the back of Jack's neck and he looked uneasily back into the crowd.

As the mass of people thinned, they naturally stepped over the congealing blood on the concrete platform without seeming to notice it. Weary parents corralled their little hobgoblins of make believe. There were four or five little superheroes among them.

 **Why is there never a little Deadpool?**

 _Because we are too awesome?_

 **Don't forget Kidpool.**

As the crowd dispersed, Deadpool turned to Jack. "What do you say? Let's go a round and see if we can kill each other? Like, maybe only an immortal can kill another Immortal. 'There can be only one!' And all that jazz."

"Isn't that what we did earlier?" Jack asks confused.

"That shot to the head must have bruised your brain, Cap, 'cause we'd teamed up to fight that creepy alien thingy in the black suit. You don't remember?"

Jack exhaled deeply and looked around; he saw the creature, standing behind an old woman waiting to get on the train.

"Wade, there it is," he said and turned to make sure he had Deadpool's attention. As he does, the feeling of Deja Vu crawls up his spine. He's scared, but he can't remember why. "Wade, what's going on? I don't…" But Deadpool's got the thing in sight, and pulls one katana from his back sheath without taking his eyes off it.

"Jack, follow my line of sight. Don't blink, don't look away, this creature is messing with our heads.

 **What creature? What are you all talking about?**

 _That thing, right in front of us that looks like a Dancing Raisin in a suit._

Jack pulled out his cell phone and without looking away from the creature, he pushed the buttons and was connected to the Hub.

"Ah, Jack, we've been trying to reach —" a voice came over the speaker.

"Not now, Ianto. I need all the information you can get me on a creature that you forget the moment you look away from it."

"On it."

Both men heard the sound of keys clicking on the other end, followed by a soft curse, "Oh, no."

"That doesn't sound particularly positive," Deadpool said, stalking forward, sword raised. "Are you armed, Cap?"

Jack checked his pockets and waistband and found he was not carrying anything but a half-empty bag of Jelly Babies and a small vial.

"No, you got anything you can spare?"

"You know how to use a gun?"

"Yes," Jack responded. Deadpool hands Jack one of his two pistols. "Check the load, it should be full; I have unlimited ammo, but once someone else takes my weapon, it won't reload."

"That's a handy thing," Jack said, sliding his eyes away from the creature and checking the load. "So, how about we go get coffee and talk about ways to die?"

"After we deal with this creature, Jack. Look straight ahead; don't freak out."

"Shit, I feel like I have the memory of a goldfish. Ianto, I need something more than, 'oh, no.' Tell me you have something, a name, a weakness."

"You're outta luck, Jack," Owen's' voice came over the line. "I hacked into UNIT's databases and this one's got the Doctor's mark all over it. Doesn't it look like… does it have a bulbous head, sunken eyes, and no mouth?"

"That's what I'm looking at."

"It's called The Silence and UNIT has shoot-to-kill orders on it. It says, 'Shoot on Sight.'"

"Great, thanks for the info. See if you can find any weaknesses listed. I'll leave the call open."

"How is it that you can see it, Wade? Maybe that'll give us some advantage."

"Well," Deadpool said, scratching his ass with one hand, "I'm… certifiably insane. One of the voices in my head doesn't see it at all, but he's my voice of reason, so…"

"One of the voices?"

"Yeah, well, I can remember it, even if I look away because part of me sees it."

"Now that we know that — " Jack said, but it was too late. Deadpool rushed across the platform.

"Get down, Bea Arthur, my love," he screamed at the old lady who fainted dead away and sliced into the Silence behind her.

"That was impossible," Jack said, looking at the mangled wreckage of the corpse. "Ianto, Owen, come get the body. We've got to get this into the lab for analysis," Jack barked over the phone, then hung up.

"Nah, easy-peasey," Deadpool said. "Did your guy say he hacked into UNIT. What outfit are you?"

 **Unified Intelligence Taskforce?**

 _We said unit, hehehehe._

"We're Torchwood, Wade."

"You need another member? I'm currently looking for work, and as you can see, I'm good in a fight."

"That you are, Wade. Let's go have some coffee and talk it over," Jack said. He threw one arm over Deadpool's shoulder and with the other hand eased the vial of Retcon out of his pocket. He wasn't sure it would work on someone so mentally unstable as Wade, but he'd have to give it a try, just in case.


End file.
